DNA testing required in wake of widespread Somali family reunification fraud
Posted by Ann Corcoran on October 21, 2015
In an otherwise whining piece about how the feds are too slow to admit family members of refugees, at least this Frontline ‘news’ story admits that thousands of Somalis entered the US fraudulently resulting in a 4-year closure (in 2008) of the so-called P-3 family reunification program of the US State Department.
Somali refugees in Dadaab, a massive UN camp in Kenya. Truth be told, there is no way to thoroughly screen the refugees we accept from the UN any better here, than those we are accepting from UN camps in the Middle East. Photo:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/12/somalia-kenya-murder
You should read the whole long article, but here (below) is the segment on Somali fraud (btw, none of those who got in here by lying were ever deported).
For our thousands of new readers: We covered the discovery and aftermath extensively, here. The fraud was originally reported at the Wall Street Journal in August of 2008.
The nine major federal resettlement contractors fought tooth and nail to keep the State Department from requiring DNA testing.
Frontline on DNA testing:
Even if those restrictions are loosened, refugees applying for family reunification will face another hurdle to clear: DNA testing.
The inspiration for this requirement was born in East Africa, where more than 1 million Somalians have been displaced from their country by civil war and famine. In the mid-2000s, the U.S. was providing refuge to about 10,000 Somalians a year*** — many of whom went on to apply to the family reunification program to bring over relatives.
Immigration officials suspected that some were inventing “ghost children,” and filling out applications for children not related to them. There had even been some reports of brokers who sold the ghost children’s slots for profit, according to a U.S. Department of State official who spoke to FRONTLINE but asked not to be named.
So in early 2008, the State Department launched a pilot program to determine the extent of fraud by testing relationships using DNA.
In the initial pilot of 476 applicants in Nairobi, Kenya, only 16 percent were genetically related to every person they said was in their family. Another 39 percent tested false for at least one family member. In the remaining 45 percent of cases, applicants either refused to participate or didn’t show up for the test.
Officials interpreted these results as proof of widespread fraud. The P-3 program was suspended, and did not reopen for more than four years.
This stunned refugees around the world, many of whom had spent years waiting for P-3 applications to be approved. Most were told to apply for an alternate visa, but it was even more restrictive than P-3 and soon had a multi-year waiting list.
There is much more, read on.
*** We admitted 8,858 this past fiscal year, (9,000 the year before that!):
As the UNHCR is sending Somalis back to Somalia from its Kenyan camps we admitted 8,858 Somalis to the US in FY2015, here (many from the Kenyan camps!). Somalis are the third largest ethnic group admitted to the US this past year.
Go here to see how many Somalis entered the US through the Refugee Admissions Program since its inception. Notice some of the biggest years are in the George W. Bush Administration.
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